The Bubbling Bird Bath

Wed, 09/04/2013 - 12:00am

Honey! We're Not In Kansas Anymore!

By

Lois Tavaf-Motamen

The bubbling bird bath. Photo: Lois Tavaf-Motamen

We have a really nice small patio attached to our first floor Capitol Hill condo. It is relatively private and allows us to have a garden, with vegetables, and additional space to for a shed to store luggage and other things that could never fit in the tiny house. In the center of the garden is a bird bath with a solar panel that the winged creatures love. I think the squirrels do too. But, as solar panels go, this one stopped working after a couple of seasons.

So I dug out the literature, found the source, and ordered another one. Things do improve over time, and there was an option to purchase a panel that came with battery storage. It has a switch that you can turn on if you want to have the water gurgling after the sun has set. Our old one only worked if there were no clouds in the sky and depended completely upon the brightest of sunshine directly overhead.

When my husband set up the new device it turned on immediately. Having been without it a few weeks made us realize how much we enjoy the sound and the look of the water feature. Now we can turn it on in the evening too. We are hoping to enjoy it for awhile before the cold weather sets in. We had a couple birdbaths in Milwaukee, but they were not solar powered, and the electrical cord was ugly and inconvenient. But for the birds, I don’t think it makes any difference.

I was a winner in the New Yorker’s 2012 Eustace Tilley Contest; have a Facebook page called LIT’s DigitalPaintings; Esty and Fine Art America Shops; and two digital children’s books “A Tiny Fish Tale” and “The Four Promises” published by StoryChimes that can be found in the ITunes App Store. Print and Kindle versions of “A Tiny Fish Tale” are available on Amazon.